The present invention relates generally to edible potato products produced from a workable potato dough. More particularly, it relates to improved French fried potatoes formed from a potato dough.
Originally, French fried potatoes were made by peeling raw potatoes, cutting them into strips and then frying the strips in oil. However, French fries produced in this conventional manner from raw potatoes are disadvantageous in several respects.
First, the quality of French fries will vary with the potato used. This variance will occur both between different species of potatoes and the age of the potato within a given species. The variance is due to different chemical characteristics inherent in the potatoes, such as sugar content, starch content and specific gravity. The problems caused by variations of such properties in potatoes are discussed in detail in Potato Processing published in 1959 by the A.V.I. Publishing Company, Inc. West Port, Conn., and edited by W. F. Talbert and O. Smith.
Second, there is a substantial amount of waste in the raw starting material attributable to variations in size and the irregularities in shape of the starting vegetable. It is necessary to use essentially only the central portion of the potato in order to make strips of suitable size. Accordingly, smaller pieces in the form of slivers and the like are discarded or converted into less desirable food products.
Third, the cut potato strips, from which French fried potatoes are made, necessarily vary in size because of the irregular shape of potatoes; therefore a batch of cut strips does not fry uniformly.
Finally, it is necessary to peel and cut the potatoes at the time that the French fried potatoes are to be prepared to get a final food product with a desirable flavor, texture, and consistency. This is very time consuming and a great delay during the food services rush periods where French fried potatoes are prepared in quantity. In addition, there is the well-known disadvantage of the loss spoilage of fresh potatoes during storage.
To solve the inadequacies of French fried potatoes produced from raw potatoes, attempts have been made to produce "fabricated" French fries from a potato dough, such as the processes disclosed in Backinger et al., U.S. Pat. No. 3,085,020, issued Apr. 9, 1963; Fritzberg, U.S. Pat. No. 3,282,704, issued Nov. 1, 1966; Willard et al., U.S. Pat. No. 3,399,062, issued Aug. 27, 1968; or, Keller, U.S. Pat. No. 3,468,673, issued Sept. 23, 1969. In this manner the composition of the French fry can be more or less controlled. The raw material can be made just prior to frying or the fabricated French fry pieces can be frozen to eliminate any quality variation induced by time. Moreover, the size of the pieces can be carefully controlled to assure uniformity of frying.
Although alatable fabricated French fries have been produced by prior techniques, the quality attained has never equalled the quality of a high quality French fry produced in the conventional manner from raw potatoes. Two problems have been encountered; namely the flavor of a high quality of natural French fry has never been duplicated, and, secondly, the same internal texture surrounded by a crisp yet tender outer surface, or "crust", has never been achieved. This desirable internal texture has been described in Vahling, U.S. Pat. No. 3,175,914 as being mealy and having the consistency of a baked potato. However, no one has yet attempted to utilize a baked potato starting material in the formation of a French fry potato product. This may be due to any number of reasons; for example, the desirable mealy internal texture of a baked potato may possibly have been thought to be lost in the course of subsequent processing steps necessary to fabricate the final French fry product. But it has been surprisingly discovered that the mealy internal texture of baked potatoes is retained during further processing steps to give an ideal French fried potato product with the same desirable internal consistency, flavor and crisp yet tender exterior crust characteristic of high-quality French fries made from raw potatoes.